You may be interested to know that the Oscars have frequently been a source of controversy. Vanessa Redgrave, who won Best Supporting Actress for this film, was booed for criticizing protestors outside during her acceptance speech. I can't imagine someone getting booed now, considering how political speeches have become so mainstream.That's your trivia for today.
The film itself is much more tense than I was expecting. I didn't really read anything about it ahead of time. I just knew that it had won three Oscars and that it starred Jane Fonda and Redgrave.
Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) is finding her first play very hard to write so she leaves longtime lover Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards) behind and goes to Paris, where she unsuccessfully tries to track down her childhood best friend, Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), once a scion of East Coast bluebloods and now a medical school student in Vienna. Julia is caught under the crushing wave of Hitler's occupation of Austria and asks an enormous favor of her newly famous friend: to smuggle some of Julia's funds into Nazi-held Berlin to fund the resistance.
It's a very heavy film, based on Hellman's own story, and intercut with a series of flashbacks showing Lillian and Julia growing up together in a way that doesn't seem gimmicky or forced. The homoeroticism is heavily implied but never outright stated and Lillian actually punches a man (John Glover) for suggesting there was more to her and Julia's relationship. Keep an eye out for a brunette Meryl Streep in a very early role as well as Hal Holbrook and Maximillian Schell.
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